Kimm’s Corned Beef & Pea Soup

This month, as part of the Foodie PenPals program, Kimm sent me some delicious goodies! In addition, she shared her recipe for Pea Soup, which includes making Corned Beef. As I had never made either, I decided in honor of my foodie pen pal this month I would make it. It did not disappoint!

To start… the corned beef!

As she explained, ” I make corned beef – boil the beef, potatoes, veggies, like usual. I glaze the corned beef after it’s tender with equal parts apricot jam and grey poupon mustard and broil it for ten minutes.” All sounds simple enough!

Let me just preface while I believe I have eaten corned beef before… I had no idea how one corns beef or what it looked like pre-boiled. Plus the fact that you boil the meat seemed a little weird.

But as I learned – corned beef is “beef, usually brisket, cured in a seasoned brine… the term ‘corned’ beef comes from the English use of the world ‘corn,’ meaning any small particle (such as grain or salt).”

I glanced at a few recipes to get a sense of the proportions for the veggies/potatoes and got on my way of simmering meat in water for hours! I opted for a little more than half a head of cabbage, eight small red potatoes and four carrots, peeled and diced.

The handy instructions on the package of corned beef said to cover with water and cook for 3 hours until tender, covered.

Around the 2.5 hour mark, I put my veggies in.

While everything was cooked, I followed Kimm’s suggestion of glazing the corned beef with apricot and mustard. I would never think to combine fruit and meat, but it was good – especially the apricot/mustard mixture!

And so here we have homemade corned beef with potato and veg! Yum!

Plus not only did this corned beef lend itself to pea soup, but I also used leftovers for a sandwich melt, an improvised corned beef hash, and a Reuben sandwich (though without sauerkraut is it considered a rueben?).

Now on to the pea soup! (which I also had never made… or eaten in a very long time)

As Kimm explained, she then “takes the water that I cooked the meat in and refrigerate it over night. I skim off the fat and make pea soup using that as the liquid. I add onions, carrot, celery and pepper (you don’t need salt), a bag of green split peas (just use the pea/water ratio on the bag, and simmer til the beans turn to soup. I then cut up the left over corned beef, cabbage and whatever other left over veggies I have and warm them up in the soup. It makes the most flavorful broth doing it this way!”